Quite a while back, I went on a record accusing the RIAA of using bad statistics and half-facts to back up their claims that music piracy vis a vis the old Napster and newer gnutella clients is the real reason why the music industry is failing. A German weekly news magazine, Die Zeit has come out with a short article on the same topic making some of the same points. Take a minute to read Britney für lau - unfortunately, this is for German readers only. (I wish, however, more journalism like this would make a point of citing sources for information. While the article contains good points based on what appears to be valid statistical questioning, it doesn't actually give the statistics or the facts...)
One of the points made later in the article:
Man kann sich etliche Geschäftsmodelle denken, in denen Britney Spears und Eminem kostenlos zu hören und dennoch „profitabel“ sind. Die eigentlichen Einnahmequellen könnten der Verkauf von Fanprodukten oder Abonnements von exklusiven Inhalten auf den Fanseiten („Britneys Tagebuch“) sein oder Livekonzerte im Abo-Kabelfernsehen. Vor allem könnten solche Ikonen des Massengeschmacks viel mehr Werbung treiben als bisher, die Medienkonzerne könnten viel stärker mit der Werbe- und Erlebniswirtschaft verschmelzen. Warum sollten die Sponsorfirmen großer Stars nicht gleich auch die teure Vermarktung der Alben mit übernehmen, die den Medienfirmen bislang solche Kopfschmerzen bereitet?
I think this is cause for some consideration, however. We have seen how the idea that advertising is going to be the savior of every free product has failed. There remains little of the free dial-up, DSL, cell phones, land-line phone calls, publishing, etc. that was once talked about. The problem with advertising is that many continue to see it as a nuisance. For example, most of my day is spent on a dial-up line in my office (because we have no other reasonable form of internet access available in our cornfield) and I am more often than not extremely annoyed by the bloated and intrusive advertisements that appear on many of the pages of online magazines and newspapers I like to read. Although I very much understand the need for such revenue to continue providing content for free, the way in which it is done plays a big role in how successful the content can be.
C|Net's News.com is an example of a painfully irritating website when it comes to reading articles. The writing is often overtaken with adds that cause me to stop reading after the first paragraph - plus, when you ad the fact that load time of the page is slow because of the added bloat, I think twice before visiting news.com. Now, imagine every song you downloaded for free came with the cost of an advertisement at the beginning and end. Most people might not think much of it, but I think it takes away the quality of the product and I would much rather pay my dollar for the copy that is without the annoyance than get it for free.* Have you ever noticed that you can no longer fast-forward through the FBI and Copyright warnings at the beginning of a DVD? What a pain! What if I have already seen that DVD a few times, why do I need to constantly be reminded of this? I find it highly annoying. These are little issues that make the advertisement idea questionable. Plus, in a down market, where people are not necessarily making the same type of impulse purchases that advertising is often aimed at, what happens to all of this
free stuff when the market starts to dry up?
It is my opinion that easy to manage distribution methods (like
iTunes) are the closest thing we are going to get to "free" over the long run. We need to learn to accept that paying for things is what makes the world go round. People should be compensated for their efforts. What the RIAA and music industry has been so slow to realize is that their distribution method is broken. When CD's came out, there were a number of clear advantages - portability, ease of use, and quality (both in the sound of the music and also in how much abuse a CD could take in starting, stopping, rewinding, etc.) - and the only people who seem to have recognized a few of these items are those pushing for distribution methods similar to Apple.** There need to be limits on what we can do with the music and video we purchase. To think that we are going to have data files that can be copied and moved limitlessly is highly idealistic. That would only be asking to exacerbate the legitimate problems brought on by digital reproduction. What needs to be done is work on more transparent and easy to understand methods of keeping media from being distributed at will. Again, in my experience, Apple has done a great job at doing this. They give me the sense that what I bought is actually owned by me. There are a few glitches (like my wife having purchased music on her PowerBook that I now want to have on mine, too), but I would imagine there will be refinements to what we already have. So instead of continuing to battle over whether or not media/content ought to be free or not, we should agree that the seller (i.e. the one who has come up with the idea or content) has a right to decide whether he wants to make us pay for it or not. We should also agree to find easy methods of selling and buying said media. CD's are a good structure to start with. One goes into a store (or goes to an online store), makes a choice, walks out of the store and pops the CD in the CD player. Done. If one wants to use the media elsewhere, he or she pops it out of the CD player and puts it in another. Easy as that. Even my dad can figure that out and that's the way it should be.
*Yes, this may seem like an easy statement to make because I have already made it clear that I don't mind paying for music. There is a philosophical and moral value to this, however. I feel that intellectual property is like any other property (as long as we don't stretch the definition of intellectual property too far and make claims on rights to it for too long) - there is definite ownership of it and the owning party should be paid for it. By saying that something is "too expensive," you are simply saying that you a) cannot afford it at this time because there is a literal limitation on your wealth or b) are not willing to pay for it - i.e. you do not feel it worth the investment the selling party believes he is entitled to. There is no greater philosophical meaning than "too expensive" and those that try to use the phrase "too expensive" to demonize the selling party are fools. They are only muddying the waters about ownership and when stealing is indeed stealing.
**The only thing I see missing is that there is still a question as to the over-all quality of the music. With all of the technological advances in recording, you would think that music would be better and clearer sounding. I realize there is a barrier to all of this, but those who shunned Dolby 5.1, etc. were wrong in thinking that people wouldn't be interested. The fact is that an AAC or high bit-rate MP3 is still lower quality than the original CD wav file.
:: 
